In Massachusetts there's an annual inspection where safety equipment is reviewed, emissions checked, everything functioning, etc. If your car passes, you get a neat little sticker to, well, stick on your windshield until the next year. If it doesn't, you get a big red "R" sticker to also stick on your windshield, and you have to have the offending part repaired/replaced in 60 days and reinspected or face your vehicle's registration being suspended.
Massachusetts is one of the handful of states, along with California, Vermont, and some others, that is hard on emissions. For example, the Mazda3 in Massachusetts is downgraded about 20hp because of this.
Case in point: my mother's 1996 Nissan Sentra with 88,000 miles was rejected by the state because my father knocked off the passenger mirror pulling out of a garage 2 weeks after he bought it. Our family decided to not pay the whopping $100 to replace the mirror (cheap bastards
), and my mom drove that Sentra safely, without even a fender bender, for 10 years, without a passenger mirror. We all got used to it: no need to check both mirrors when pulling out, easy identification of our car in a crowded parking lot, and getting used to the habit of physically turning your head to check for blind spots, which is something I always do because I'm paranoid. Massachusetts drivers suck. This year there were new and tighter regulations for inspection, and thus it got rejected when it had passed the previous 10 years. 59 days afterwards I finally replaced the mirror. Bang, we still drive it after it passed reinspection.
